BOOK I, Chap. II. THE SUC CESSORS OF COTTON. in the Seques-." him within purview of the Parliamentary Ordinance, nor of any other legal cause to subject him to sequestration. As the words of confession were on the lips of one active Committee-man, another functionary blurted out-most Proceedings felicitously-You are wrong. Master Serjeant Wilde tration of the wished it should be done.' And, in the sequel, Master Serjeant' proved to be strong enough to protract the 5012, 34, inquiry, and even to procure its adjournment to London; though his attempt to maintain the sequestration-on a plea the falsehood of which was conclusively proved-came at last to be entirely foiled. Estate of Sir T. Cotton; MS. Addit., seqq Ib., ff. 71, seqq. Ib., 74. THE AT TEMPT TO When Sir Thomas COTTON came to sum up his losses he found that they amounted to more than four thousand pounds (in the money of that day). They have had,' he wrote, '£1500, in money; besides eleven horses, worth £140; Billeting at Conington, Eyworth, and other places, which came to £100; spoil made at Sawtrey and at St. Germans which £300 will not make good; and besides the decay of my rents to an amount of at least £600 a-year; and now the layers and taxes will take up the whole of Ladyday's rent.' Meanwhile his unlucky tenants, in Huntingdonshire alone, had been deprived of a hundred and ninety horses, and their farms had been stripped both of provisions and of forage. By way of pleasant diversity to his troubles in Huntingdonshire and Bedfordshire Sir Thomas received, presently, a letter from John SELDEN-the old and warmly-attached friend of his family-warning him that the capabilities of Cotton House in London had caught the eye of certain other Committee-men, and had made a deep impression on them. They saw that it would do capitally both as a lodging house for the entertainment of distinguished strangers who might come to Westminster, to wait on the Chap. II. CESSORS OF SIR ROBERT Parliament, and as a State prison for very eminent delin- BOOK I, quents. These watchful Committee-men were also mem- THE SECbers of the Council of State; and the time had now come when King JAMES' sarcastic and well-remembered COTTON. jest—' Bring me sax chairs, for I see sax kings approaching'-was turning itself into a very awkward fact. These Committee-men, too, (like their humbler fellows at Huntingdon,) had their Serjeant at hand to give them advice on elastic points of law. Serjeant DENDY,' wrote SELDEN, 'fairly told me that the Committee and Council were informed that, by the Patent under which you claim, it was provided that your interest [in Cotton House] should cease, during the time of the Parliament.' Certainly, an awkward clause to appear in a man's lease, in days when Parliament, beginning its time' in 1641 had not quite ended it until 1660. This claim of the Council of State proved, in the sequel, to have in it no more of real validity than had that other claim to procure the Conington rents to be paid to us at Huntingdon'; but, like that, it gave Sir Thomas COTTON a good deal of annoyance before he succeeded in getting quit of it. a It is much to his honour that petty but cumulative misfortunes like these did not sour Sir Thomas CoTTON'S temper. When quieter times came, he showed himself the worthy son of his eminent father, both by the improvement of his library, at considerable charge, and by the liberality with which he lent his choicest manuscripts, and, in many ways, made them and his other collections serviceable to literature. The still extant acknowledgments of service. of this sort from historians and great scholars are very numerous.* * I had noted some of these as worthy, by way of sample, to be printed. But the reduced limits of my book (as compared with Selden to Sir an Appendix red T. Cotton; in to Cotton MSS. marked 16.1. fol. 50 (B. M.) BOOK I, CESSORS OF SIR ROBERT COTTON. By his first marriage with Margaret HOWARD, daughter of William Lord HOWARD of Naworth, Sir Thomas had one son and two daughters. By his second marriage with Alice CONSTABLE he had four sons, two of whom died without issue. Alice was the daughter and sole heir of Sir John CONSTABLE of Dromondley in Yorkshire, and the relict of Edmund ANDERSON of Eyworth and of Stratton in Bedfordshire, and she brought with her a considerable dowry. Sir John COTTON, the eldest son of the first marriage, its plan) have compelled the omission of much illustrative matter which had been carefully prepared for insertion, and which, as I hope, would have been found to merit the attention of the reader. I will find room, however, to mention one little fact connected with the famous Evangeliary marked 'Nero D. vi.' The reader probably remembers Sir Robert COTTON's fruitless perambulation of the aisle of Westminster Abbey, with that splendid MS. in his hands, on the day of the Coronation of Charles the First. It seems likely that the anecdote was told to Charles the Second when, at length, a like ceremony was to take place for him. Be that as it may, he sent before he had been many days in England-a confidential servant to borrow the book from Sir Thomas. And the fact of the loan stands recorded on a Ay-leaf, by the King's intermediary, in honour of the most noble Sir Thomas COTTON, the starre of learning and honestie.' The MS., I may add, is one of those which came to Sir Robert from Dethick (Garter). It bears Dethick's autograph with the date 1603' and Cotton's, ' 1608.' Besides the Four Gospels it contains Processus factus ad Coronationem Regis Ricardi Secundi, and Modus tenendi Parliamentum. For some momentary fancy or other Sir Robert took out of another superb MS. of his-the Psalter of King Henry the Sixth-a small but beautiful miniature, and made of it a vignette for this Ethelstan volume. So it continued to remain for two hundred and forty years, when Sir Frederick Madden restored the miniature to its more legitimate place (Domitian A. xvii, fol. 96*.) Had this Nero volume chanced to have been scrutinized at the moment when it was Sir Robert's fate to be stigmatized as an embezzler of records,' it is very possible that it might have been called to bear witness for the charge. For it is undeniable that the RO. COTTON BRUCEUs' is written over an erasure. (The signature occurs on the beautiful dedicatory page- Beatissimo Papæ Damaso Hieronymus.') But, fortunately, the descent of the book can be traced clearly, BOOK I. Chap. II. CESSORS OF sat in Parliament for the borough of Huntingdon in the reign of CHARLES THE SECOND, and for Huntingdonshire in THE SUCthat of JAMES THE SECOND. But he took no prominent part SIR ROBERT in public affairs. Like his father he was twice married. And COTTON. his first wife became step-daughter as well as daughter-in-law to his father, being Dorothy, daughter and heir of Edmund ANDERSON of Eyworth above mentioned. His second wife was Elizabeth HONYWOOD. He seems to have resembled his father both in his tastes for a quiet country life, and in the liberality with which he allowed (on reasonable cause and to proper persons) access to his library. Nor did Sir John, any more than Sir Thomas, escape animadversion, when he allowed himself to form his own judgment of the fituess or the timeliness of any particular application. Caustic Symonds D'EwES writes down Sir Thomas COTTON as 'unworthy to be master of so inestimable a library.' Caustic dutobiog, and Bishop BURNET writes in his turn of Sir John COTTON: A vol. ii, p. 40. great Prelate had possessed him with such prejudices against me that. . . . he desired to be excused' [from granting BURNET admittance to the Cottonian Library] unless the Archbishop of Canterbury or a Secretary of State would recommend me as a person fit to have access.' Against strictures such as these, it were easy, but is not needful, to adduce a score of acknowledgments of deep obligation, from writers more eminent by far than either D'EwES or BURNET. The eldest son (also John) of Sir John COTTON, by his wife Dorothy, did not live to inherit either the famous. library or the ancestral estates. He died in 1681, and his later days seem to have been marked by some stormy incidents. In one point, his troubles resembled those which disturbed the last year of his great-grandfather's life;in so far as that they were caused by a lady. But whereas Corresp., History of tion, vol. ii, Introd., p. 8. (Edit. of 1714.) Book I, CESSORS OF COTTON. Sir Robert had the lady thrust upon him, to suit the purposes of other men, the misfortunes of his great-grandson. SIR ROBERT appear to have grown out of an ardent but illicit passionas ardently, and not less illicitly, returned by its object. Some scraps of their correspondence which have chanced to be preserved read, after two centuries of dusty repose, as if they were still all aflame with that fierce love which an experienced poet describes as 'passion's essence.'* Sir John COTTON survived till nearly the close of the seventeenth century. He was succeeded in the baronetcy and estates by John, the son of the last-mentioned John COTTON, who had married Frances, daughter and heir of Sir George DOWNING of East Hatley in Cambridgeshire. Sir John, fourth baronet, married Elizabeth HERBERT, one of the grand-daughters of Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. Like his ancestors of many generations, this Sir John COTTON sat in Parliament for Huntingdonshire. His chief claim to honourable memory is that he settled the Cottonian Library on the British nation for ever, and thus made its founder, Sir Robert, the virtual and first FOUNDER OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. This was done by Act of Parliament, in the year 1700. * Take, for example, these few lines: 'Sweete Sainte whome I soley addore, at whooes srine I offer myself; I reseived your loving lines. Without them, I could not live at all;-being deprived of your blessed sight, I live yet, but most miserably. Use means, if it be possible, that we may come to the speech of one another; and the Heavens of Hope may be yet auspitious unto us. Those deviles have again been writing letters unto my mother.' In 1679, it would seem, the two ardent lovers were kept in a sort of honourable imprisonment. On COTTON's coming to Cotton House, in the spring of that year, an upper servant of the family writes thus to a correspondent: 'I advised him to call for money; take a coach and go about to take the air, and to visit his friends that are in or about the town; and not to be mewed up in a room, without money or company.'-John SQUIRES, to a person unnamed; in Appendix to Cotton MSS. 16, 1.' (B. M.) |